508 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
folk of several European countries that the wren was the “ king of 
birds.” Hence, probably the generic term Regulus formerly applied 
to various species of wren, and, likewise, its English equivalent 
“kinglet.” “Sparrow ” is literally a “ flutterer” (spar, to quiver), 
and ‘* swallow ” means a “ tosser, or mover to and fro; from its flight ” 
(Skeat). “Lark” has been softened down from the old English 
“laverok” or “Javerock” (Anglo-Saxon Jdaverce), literally “a 
worker of guile,” from some old superstition regarding the bird as of 
ill omen. The bestowal of this name upon an American bird allied 
to the starlings was no doubt due to an effort on the part of the early 
settlers to name birds after the more familiar ones of the homeland. 
The ground-nesting habits, the long hind claw, the loud twittering 
flight notes and clear song of the American bird may have given some 
slight reason for this incongruous title. 
“Thrush ” with its variants “throstle” and “ throstle-kok,” as 
applied to the song thrush (Z'urdus musicus) of Europe, is an old 
‘ word and appears in its older forms in a treatise by Walter de Bibles- 
worth at the end of the thirteenth century. In the Brussels Manu- 
script “ throstle ” seems to refer to the missel thrush (7urdus viscivo- 
rus). The song thrush is also referred to by its other old English 
name of “maviz” (later “mavis”). In this same treatise of de 
Biblesworth’s the European blackbird (7urdus merula) 1s spoken of 
as “ osel” or “ hosel-brit,” and lhkewise by its old English name of 
“merle.” Later it became “ ousel-cock” as in the quaint ditty in 
“ Midsummer-Night’s Dream ”— 
The ousel-cock, so black of hue, 
With orange-tawny bill, 
The throstle with his note so true, 
The wren with little quill. 
The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 
The plain-song cuckoo gray, 
Whose note full many a man doth mark, 
And dares not answer, nay; * * *, 
“Mawys” or “mavis” as a dialectic name has lasted down to the 
present day in the counties of east England. It seems curious that it 
was not transferred to any American thrush, notably the wood thrush. 
“ Osel ” is clearly the parent word of the modern “ ousel ” and in this 
latter form is still applied to an allied species of the European black- 
bird—the ring-ousel (7’. torquatus), as well as to a distinct, though 
related, family—the dippers or water ousels (Cinclide). 
Without doubt the word “ thrasher,” applied to the birds of the 
American genus Toxostoma, is a varient of “ thrush ” and “ throstle,” 
for we find “ thrushel ” and “ thrusher ” as variants in the provincial 
English dialects. The term “thrasher” occurs in Barton’s Frag- 
ments (1799), and Wilson also uses the name as a vernacular in his 
